UNIX

Configuration of Synchronet for use on Unix/Linux systems.

Unix/Linux Sysops will particularly want to pay attention to the [UNIX] section of your Synchronet initialization file (e.g. ctrl/sbbs.ini).

Default: <none>

Default: <none>

If you do not want to run Synchronet (and all external programs/doors) as root (the Unix administrator user), you will have to set the User and Group key values.

Example:

User=sbbsuser
Group=sbbsgroup

NOTE: the sbbsuser and sbbsgroup names are just examples. You must pick valid user/group names for your system (e.g. exist in your system's /etc/passwd file) and both the user and group name may be the same.

Also, the Synchronet file permissions/ownership should be such that this user/group would have read and write access to them. The best way to accomplish this is a command like:

# chown -R sbbsuser:sbbsgroup /sbbs

If you do this, then be sure to run any Synchronet utilities (e.g. SCFG) as the same user that the BBS is going to run as:

# su -c /sbbs/exec/scfg sbbs  

Default: U (User)

Supported Values: 0-7 (“Local0” through “Local7” facility), U (for “User” facility), and S or F (for “Standard” facilities)

If you have sbbs installed to run in the background as a daemon, logging via syslog rather than the local console, you may want to set the LogFacility key value. A good value to use is:

LogFacility=3

Then, in /etc/syslog.conf (or /etc/rsyslog.d/sbbslog.conf) you will need to add the line:

local3.*                 /var/log/sbbs.log

Depending on how your vendor set up syslog.conf initially, you may also want to exclude local3.* from other log files (Noteably /var/log/messages). how to do this varies with your syslogd implementation, but for BSD based ones (Which BSD and many Linux distros use) you would add “;local3.none” to the end of the first field in the /var/log/messages line.

You will have to create this file manually initially by running:

# touch /var/log/sbbs.log

Then send a HUP to syslogd like so:

# killall -HUP syslogd

Or it might be necessary to:

# service syslogd restart

You could then monitor the Synchronet daemon log output with:

# tail -f /var/log/sbbs.log

You will want to investigate how your system rotates logs and set it up to rotate sbbs.log also.

# cat /etc/logrotate.d/sbbs
/var/log/sbbs*.log {
      weekly
      missingok
      rotate 52
      notifempty
      create 640 root adm
      sharedscripts
      postrotate
              invoke-rc.d rsyslog reload > /dev/null
      endscript
}

Further use of the LogFacility setting is beyond the scope of this document. Read your syslog.conf manpage for more information about this. In particular, do NOT use the 'S' setting unless you are familiar with advanced syslogd configuration. The S setting will use different facilities for each feature of Synchronet as appropriate. Specifically, S will use:

  LOG_AUTH
  LOG_DAEMON
  LOG_FTP (If available)
  LOG_MAIL
  LOG_CRON
  

Note: the LogFacility value in the sbbs.ini file may be overridden with the -d command-line option (e.g. sbbs -d3 to daemonize sbbs with LogFacility of Local3).

Default: Synchronet

This is the value passed as the ident argument to the system's openlog function. Run man openlog for more details on this setting.

Default: /var/run/sbbs.pid

This key contains the path of the file which will contain the process identifier (PID) of Synchronet and is used by background/daemon startup scripts to query the current state of sbbs.

# service sbbs status
Synchronet BBS services status: [running]
PID(s): 6270

If you change the value of this key, you may also need to modify your startup script (e.g. /etc/init.d/sbbs).

Default: 077

Sets sbbs's file mode creation mask.

Note: If the value begins with a 0, it will be interpreted in octal notation.

Run man umask for more details on this setting.

Default: false

When set to true, forces sbbs to run daemonized (in the background) without specifying the -d command-line option. Setting this value to true is not recommended.

• Configuration
• syslog